Another MCTS certificate in my arsenal

Yesterday I had the exam TS: SharePoint 2010, Application Development (C#). The exam was tough but I passed with a high mark; I had to wait until today to download my Microsoft's MCTS digital certificate from my MCP site. 

Now I am eager to see when Microsoft is going to announce its certification path for SharePoint 2013 development, as the dev exams are currently available only for SharePoint 2010.  Click here to see current exams and certifications available. 

Happy SharePoint-Iraq 4th Anniversary

Happy 4th anniversary to our SharePoint-Iraq team. 

This is a story of our study team and SharePoint. Yes, it was a joint effort between me and my friend Eng. Ahmed Alzubaidy to establish our team for IT studying. We named our team: SharePoint-Iraq because we wanted to start learning Microsoft SharePoint..

We built our small IT lab on January 2009, and started studying SharePoint 2007. We spent 6 months to 'tame' it. We realized that in order to really understand SharePoint, we needed to study the entire Microsoft stack that SharePoint relies on. We studied Windows Server, AD, DNS, SQL Server, IIS, authentication and many other protocols and ideas. That was a huge task by all means, and we are still doing it. Our study process has evolved too and we used white board with stickers and we started recording training videos on the stuff we learn. As time goes we learned/worked on SharePoint 2010 Foundation/Server and Online with the SharePoint Designer and InfoPath Designer. We came a long way, and this is how SharePoint became literally our 'child'.

On a parallel path, I started a programming path for SharePoint so that both Administration and development go side by side. BTW, we named our SP knowledge base as: "SharePoint Empire".. sweet ha!

In 2009

In 2012

Digging on Could not find this Item error in SharePoint

I worked on this error a while ago when I was trying to replicate what was happening to a client's environment. When you want to upload EXE and DLL files to a document library in SharePoint using Explorer View, the operation fails with the following annoying error msg:

"Could not find this item
This is no longer located in \\sitename\DavWWWRoot. Verify the item's location and try again."

Of course uploading these types of files into SharePoint is highly not recommended due to security reasons, this is why they are on the blocked file types in Central Admin but for some companies it is a requirement.

You can find the complete error description and solution here, thanks to Stanislaw Delost!

But I wanted to see for myself what is the 'item' that is not being found as indicated by the error msg.

So, I built a small Windows program to imitate the exact operation of Explorer View's operation of copying the wanted files from a source folder into the desired doc library's WebDav folder.

And the error stack trace:

System.IO.FileNotFoundException was unhandled

  Message=Could not find file '\\dev\DavWWWroot\test\AERotatorWebpart.dll'.
  Source=mscorlib
  FileName=\\dev\DavWWWroot\test\AERotatorWebpart.dll
  StackTrace:
       at System.IO.__Error.WinIOError(Int32 errorCode, String maybeFullPath)
       at System.IO.File.InternalCopy(String sourceFileName, String destFileName, Boolean overwrite)
       at System.IO.File.Copy(String sourceFileName, String destFileName)

The code is simple. I used the program to copy normal document files and images and it worked just fine. When I used it to copy EXE and DLL files the program crashed. As you can see the exception msg in .NET is "Could not find file "\\ServerName\DavWWWroor\DocLibName\FileName.DLL"

and the exception is of type FileNotFoundException.

It looks like that it couldn't find the file that we want to copy in the first place..weird!!

Explorer View operation uses WebDav protocol and agents that get installed with SharePoint.

When WebDav detects a file of type .EXE or .DLL, it runs 2 handlers in IIS: CGI-exe (for EXE files), and ISAPI-dll (for DLL files). My guess is that these programs are trying to access our files from the doc lib folder (destination) before the copying operation completed, so it will not find the file and an error occurs. 

As mentioned in details in Delost's blog, the solution is to prevent the CGI-exe and ISAPI-dll handlers from running in IIS by removing the EXECUTE permission in Hanlder Mappings in IIS.

MS SharePoint App for Win Phone

Microsoft just released a preview version of its 'app' for SharePoint social features on Win Phone.
First, the idea itself is good: this is the 'Facebook' face of the enterprise, where employees can (according to Microsoft):

• Create new status posts
• Add comments to ongoing discussions
• Read and “like” your colleagues’ posts
• @mention a colleague directly 
• Use #hashtags
• Upload pictures
• Discover people profiles
• Work with followed documents

Now this is good isn't it? yes.. BUT..(there is always a but!!)..
But according to reviews so far, apparently its only meant for SharePoint 2013, it lacks the the required functionality to run across SharePoint 2010 as it shows connection errors. Users got confused since this piece of information is not mentioned in the app's description.
That put a negative image over the the app, and the review so far is 2 stars out of 5.

The good news is that its still under development, and Microsoft should really cover up for these holes really good when the finally release their stable version. Should this come true, they should make similar app for iPhone and Android devices.

Here is the link to the app.

Embed Flash SWF resources inside web part in SharePoint 2010

If you are looking for a quick and easy guide on how to embed shockwave and flash files (.swf) into web Web parts then look no further!

As it is a bit different to embed .swf files (and other resources) into SharePoint 2010 than it was in SharePoint 2007, I split the procedure into 2 parts: the Visual Studio part and the SharePoint part.

 The Visual Studio Part:

1. Copy the resource file (.SWF) file inside the Visual Studio project folder directly, or put it in a custom folder.

2. Select the .swf file -> properties -> set the build action property into ‘Embedded Resource’

3. Now, construct the resource FILE-PATH as: ProjectName.FolderName.FileName.Extension

Example:

My project’s name is: ‘EmbedResources’, and the file ‘Clock.swf’ is directly under the project. Then the FILE-PATH will be: “EmbedResources.Clock.swf”

4. In AssemblyInfo.cs put the following line (use the FILE-PATH from point 3 above):

[Assembly: System.Web.UI.WebResource(FILE-PATH, “application/x-shockwave-flash”)]

Example:

[assembly: System.Web.UI.WebResource("EmbedResources.Clock.swf", "application/x-shockwave-flash")]

5. In Web part code file, you can put the following code inside the RenderContents() method:

(use the FILE-PATH from point 3 above)

This.Page.ClientScript.GetWebResourceUrl(base.GetType(), FILE-PATH)

Example:

string path = this.Page.ClientScript.GetWebResourceUrl(base.GetType(), "EmbedResources.Clock.swf");

6. To display the flash put the following script:

string str = string.Concat(new object[] {

"<OBJECT classid=\"clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000\" codebase=\"http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=7,0,0,0\" width=", "120", " height=", "120", "> <PARAM NAME=movie VALUE=\"", path,

"\"> <PARAM NAME=wmode VALUE=\"Transparent\"><PARAM NAME=quality VALUE=high> <EMBED src=\"", path,

"\" quality=high wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"", "120", "\" height=\"", "120",

"\" TYPE=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" PLUGINSPAGE=\"http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash\"></EMBED></OBJECT></p>"

});

writer.Write(str);

Now install the web part solution into your SharePoint site, but we are not there yet!

 The SharePoint Part:

These are pretty much requirements, make sure you check every point here in order for the swf file to actually run:

1. Install Adobe (formerly Macromedia) Flash or Shockwave player for your browser.

2. Enable Active-X components on your browser

3. SharePoint 2010 is a little bit acts as ‘defensive’ against browser scripts and files. To overcome this, go to Central Admin -> App. Manag. -> Manage Web App. -> SharePoint 80 -> General Settings -> General Settings -> set the Browser File Handling to “Permissive”

Now, you can add the web part to page and enjoy the animations J

Note: For embedding resources inside Sandboxed web part, Joel Jeffery a good post here:

http://joelblogs.co.uk/2011/06/30/embedding-resources-in-sandbox-solutions/

Snow on your SharePoint!

How about bringing winter right into your SharePoint site?
I found this cool javascript project made by Scott Schiller here. According to project website, there are 2 files, either one can be used:

snowstorm.js --> is the general code
snowstorm-min.js --> optimized, minified version (~40% smaller 'ice')

Now I summed up the steps required to implement this effect on SharePoint 2010/2007: Before you begin, you have to download the 2 files "snowstorm.js" and 'snowstorm-min.js" from the site, then upload these files into the SharePoint site such as in Style Library or a custom folder in it.
There are 2 methods to run snowstorm effect in SharePoint 2010 and 2007:

Method A: Editing the Master page

Use this method when you want the snow effect over all site pages.

1) Using SharePoint Designer, Open your master page file such as 'V4.master' for SP2010 or 'default.master' for SP2007, or you can a specific master page and name it "snowstorm.master".

2) Within the <head> tag of the master page, add a script reference to the javascript file just above the content place holder named "PlaceHolderAdditonalPageHead" (and above your custom CSS references, if applicable) as follows:

<script src="/Style%20Library/snowstorm.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

3) Save the changes to master page. If this a specific master page then apply it to a specific site page.

Method B: Editing the ContentEditorWebPart

[as done by Shoban in here]
Use this method when you want the snow effect over a specific page such as only the home page.

1) Open your SharePoint page and add a Content Editor WebPart.

2) Edit the HTML Source for the content Editor WebPart, add the following code:

[sourcecode language="javascript"]
<script src="/Style%20Library/snowstorm-min.js"></script>
[/sourcecode]

3) set the Chrome Type for the Web Part as 'None', and set Chrome State to 'Minimized'.

4) Save and Exit Edit mode.


After you finish with either of the methods above, open the site page and enjoy the snow. Thats it!

Note: select a suitable theme or customize one so that the snow particles shows clearly.

The Result..

Do you think there are other cool effects that can be applied to SharePoint? please share ideas.

How to find which W3WP.exe process to debug

Problem:

When you set break points in SharePoint code, you need to attach the debugger to the w3wp.exe process that is responsible for running your code. The problem is that there are multiple instances of this process, so which one to attach the debugger to?

Solution:

Run the Windows Task Manager -> View -> Select Columns -> Check ‘PID’ and ‘Command Line’ columns. 
In Processes tab you will see the available w3wp.exe processes along with their IDs and command lines.

Pick the one with a command line referring to ‘SharePoint-80’. That will be your main SharePoint process so get the PID (example: 6512).

Now in Attach to a process windows in Visual Studio, select the process with the aforementioned PID (6512).